Software piracy has become a very significant bane for software producers. In particular, the world wide web (WWW) has made unauthorized distribution of proprietary software, content, or other intellectual property belong to others amazingly simple and pervasive. For example, bulletin boards, web sites, and the like have enabled ordinary consumers to download intellectual property via the Internet with very little effort. Additionally, new technology has permitted small entities to copy CD-ROMs, DVDs, and other optical media with minimal expense.
Traditionally, software and content producers have attempted to prevent unauthorized distribution of their intellectual property via various anti-copying algorithms. For example, software and content producers often attempt to protect intellectual property via various encryption schemes. For example, software and content producers often encrypt the content on a media. Accordingly, the content on the media cannot be obtained and, therefore, cannot be copied without knowledge of the encryption key. For example, a software product may be stored on an optical media. Upon insertion of the optical media into an appropriate computer drive, an installation program may be executed. The installation program may request the user to enter the encryption key or some type of user code associated with the encryption key (which may be supplied to the user via a license sheet). The user enters the information and the installation program uses the information to recover the encrypted software code before storing the code in residence on the user's computer.
However, encryption schemes have proven to be exceptionally ineffective. First, the user must be provided the content key in one form or another. Accordingly, encryption schemes have not been able to prevent a dishonest user from copying the content. All encryption schemes must provide key-related information to an end-user at some point thus presenting an identified point of weakness to the security scheme. Also, experience has demonstrated that reverse engineering frequently allows encryption schemes to be broken altogether thereby allowing direct access to the digitally encoded content. Specifically, reverse engineering frequently relies upon redundancy of data and the assumption that an encryption scheme is utilized. By repeatedly observing or testing data, the encryption scheme may be circumvented.
Several issues are related to copy protection that are of particular relevance. First, the issue of casual copying is quite important to software producers. Casual copying refers to the process where an otherwise legitimate user purchases software and, then, installs the software on two different computers in an unauthorized manner. For example, a software product may be licensed for personal use on a single system. A consumer may purchase the software product. The consumer may install the software on the consumer's home computer and the consumer's work desktop computer. Moreover, the software product may be installed on each of the desktop computers of the employees of the consumer.
A very significant amount of work has been performed in the art to address casual copying. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,468 to Pearce et al., assigned to MICROSOFT CORPORATION, issued Jun. 5, 2001, addresses the issue of casual copying. The '468 patent notes that casual copying is “is very difficult to monitor and even more difficult to prosecute.” In fact, the '468 patent does not identify any way to detect casual copying. Presumably, a software licensor may physically audit various computer systems. However, physically auditing computer systems is clearly unsatisfactory for most situations and is impossible for all systems that might be used for casual copying.
Accordingly, the '468 patent describes a scheme where a software product only becomes operable upon registration of the software with a registration center that is controlled by the software licensor. The registration center will not issue a registration identifier for multiple systems. Thereby, the algorithm of the '468 patent prevents casual copying.
However, it shall be appreciated that the '468 patent does not detect whether software has actually been used on two different computers in contravention of a software license. In fact, the '468 patent is premised upon the assumption that such actual use associated with casual copying cannot be detected. This is problematic when a consumer purchases a new personal computer and wishes to transfer all of the consumer's software to the new personal computer. Specifically, it is unknown how the user can “prove” to the registration center that the user will cease using the software on his or her previous computer. Thus, the consumer is forced to purchase an entirely new license or the registration center is forced to trust the consumer to only use the software on a single system.
Accordingly, there has been a well-recognized failure in the art to detect actual unauthorized software use associated with casual copying. Moreover, there is a long-felt need in the art to provide detection of unauthorized software use to avoid overly burdening software users.